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Genuinely curious: why do you think this is? I haven't surveyed zoning policies, so I don't know whether I agree with your conclusion, but I'd like to clarify

Genuinely curious: why do you think this is? I haven't surveyed zoning policies, so I don't know whether I agree with your conclusion, but I'd like to clarify a couple things. First, we must ask ourselves what the goal of optimal zoning policy is. Is it to maximize the number of people who live there? Achieve an ideal rent/wage ratio? Maximize the efficiency of shared infrastructure? Perhaps it is to maximize the desirability of living in an area. If that is the case, then if people are complaining about the house prices that may mean you're doing something right. In any case, assuming we settle on a shared metric (which may involve a combination of these various factors), we need to distinguish between comparing the average case and the worst case performance of centralized vs. decentralized zoning policy. I would say that my claim is that decentralized zoning policy will have a significantly better worst-case than centralized zoning policy, and that crafting a good zoning policy is enough of a gamble that I'd rather settle for a less-than-ideal decentralized policy than risk a horrendous centralized one. Now, to tie back to the original debate of scientific expertise in particular: would adding a group of economists and social scientists to the central planning committee tilt the situation in favor of central planning? I very much doubt it. "At the core […] is the idea that people should design for themselves their own houses, streets and communities. This idea […] comes simply from the observation that most of the wonderful places of the world were not made by architects but by the people." — Christopher Alexander et al., A Pattern Language, front bookflap[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Pattern_Language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Pattern_Language

lmm 9y ago
> Genuinely curious: why do you think this is? Because the costs of building new housing are local but the benefits are global, or at least more widely distributed than the costs. If one borough builds denser housing, that borough is the one that has to worry about building work, plumbing, schools and all the rest of it for those residents, while businesses from all its neighbours benefit from more customers and cheaper employees. For a starker example of the same effect think about taxation and public services: if we relied on local taxation being spent locally then rich areas would have low tax rates and high-quality public services (because even at low rates they can still raise a lot of money) while poor areas would have both higher taxes and worse services. Localised government is rather like privatisation: it works well when the costs and benefits are on the same scale, but rather less well when there are externalities.

lmm 9y ago

> Genuinely curious: why do you think this is? Because the costs of building new housing are local but the benefits are global, or at least more widely distributed than the costs. If one borough builds denser housing, that borough is the one that has to worry about building work, plumbing, schools and all the rest of it for those residents, while businesses from all its neighbours benefit from more customers and cheaper employees. For a starker example of the same effect think about taxation and public services: if we relied on local taxation being spent locally then rich areas would have low tax rates and high-quality public services (because even at low rates they can still raise a lot of money) while poor areas would have both higher taxes and worse services. Localised government is rather like privatisation: it works well when the costs and benefits are on the same scale, but rather less well when there are externalities.